Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives

I am using a Windows XP Service Pack 2 laptop with since past 1 year and never had any problem with this. Today morning when i booted up the system and opened My Computer, i found that all my removable media drives appear grayed out with a big red slash in a circle over them. Whenever i click any of them i receive the following error message:

"Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD ROM drives."

I haven't made any changes to the system in past one month, and surely not in the last two days which migh have resulted in this error. Also i am the only Admin or the only user of this laptop. Dont know how all these devices tuned into Read Only. The only thing i did on this laptop is about 3 days ago and that was installing drivers from CD for an upgraded video card. Could this be the cause of the problem?

While searching for help i came through an MS KB article and according to the same i found that the registry setting StorageDevicePolicies was not set, but I set it to 0. However not success yet. I thought system restore could fix the issue but i am now no more able to perform restore also.

Somebody please help me with this. Many thanks.

Alright, just try out the following and see if it helps. First connect the devices one by one with which you are having the problem. Then click Start > RUN > type "devmgmt.msc" without quotes and press Enter. Here on the right pane, click on policies tab and click the 'Reset defaults" button.

Thats it. Let us know the result.

Thank you very much for the help Manik but that dint made any difference. When i followed the steps provided by you i found that my floppy drive and optical drives just dont have the policies tab. Surprising. However the USB reader devices have the policy tab but clicking on the restore defaults doesn't make any changes.

Any other solutions please? Thanks again.

This is probably due to something wrong under registry permission. Here is what you need to do to deny write access to specific removable device classes:

• In the Group Policy Object Editor navigation pane, open Computer Configuration, then open Administrative Templates, open System, and then open Removable Storage Access.
• Right-click CD and DVD: Deny write access, and then click Properties.
• On the Properties dialog box, click Enabled to turn on the restriction, and then click OK.
• Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the following computer policies:
• Removable Disks: Deny write access
• Floppy Drives: Deny write access
• WPD Devices: Deny write access
• Close Group Policy Object Editor.

Hello KaIilAshhh. There is yet another tweaking way to reset default permissions in Windows, but i am not sure whether it will help you or not. But still you should give it a try. Just checkout the following Article describing:

Solving setup errors by using the SubInACL tool to repair file and registry permissions

The Problem Is a software Named "AdminWorks" By "Avocent".
It Is a part Of IDU (Intel Desktop Utility).

1. You need to Kill the following processes:

(Attached 1.JPG)

2. Start->Run : "msconfig" , Remove the following startup programs :

(Attached 2.JPG)

3. Delete the following Folder (Restart may be required) :

"C:\Program Files\Intel\IDU"
(Attached 3.JPG)

4. Reinstall IDU from intel's Download Site.

Dedicated To my IT Steff.
Michel,Hanoch,Eli,Meir,
"So You Can Allways Find Your Way In The Dark"

Guy

The Problem Is a software Named "AdminWorks" By "Avocent".
It Is a part Of IDU (Intel Desktop Utility).

1. You need to Kill the following processes (Task Manager -> End Process):

awServ.exe

iptray.exe

2. Start->Run : "msconfig" , Remove the following startup programs :

iptray

3. Delete the following Folder (Restart may be required) :

"C:\Program Files\Intel\IDU"


4. Reinstall IDU from intel's Download Site.


Guy